Aggressive manifestations linked to sexual drives in Freud’s first dual-drive theory

Abstract

This article investigates aggressive and hostile manifestations linked to sexual drives within Freud’s first dual-drive theory (1900–1920), the period preceding the theoretical reformulation presented in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920/2020). The methodology adopted consists predominantly of structural textual analysis, aiming to delineate the internal development of concepts across Freudian works. Based on this procedure, the following phenomena are examined: the Oedipus complex, the drive for mastery, the oral phase, the sadistic-anal phase, affective ambivalence, sadism, masochism, and beating fantasies. The investigation focuses both on conceptual development and on the theoretical inconsistencies identified. The analysis shows that, between 1910 and 1914, Freud significantly expanded his hypotheses on aggressiveness with the introduction of narcissism theory, arguing that sexual drives rely on ego drives for their development during the narcissistic phase, thereby giving rise to hostile and aggressive impulses within sexuality without the presence of unpleasure. However, important explanatory limitations are identified: the impossibility of reconciling sadism with the narcissistic phase, since sadistic behaviors are directed toward the external world from the outset; the absence, in infantile sadism, of the aim to inflict pain, a central characteristic of adult sadistic perversion; and the difficulty of understanding parricidal and homicidal wishes present in affective ambivalence solely on the basis of ego drives, as such wishes exceed the logic of self-preservation. These inconsistencies indicate that the first dual-drive theory allows aggressiveness to be understood only when articulated with eroticism, the pleasure principle, or self-preservation, proving insufficient to conceive it as an autonomous phenomenon and thus pointing to the need for the subsequent theoretical reformulation.